26 Jun, 2022
An organization’s success comes from its people and building a high-achieving workforce is a challenging and complex task. The right people have to be identified and selected, and then organized, developed, and motivated. “There is an art to organizational leadership,” explained Roper COO, Dana De Coster , “and there is a process. If you can’t attract, select, and organize the right people then it doesn’t matter how inspirational or visionary a leader might be.” Few people understand the importance and process of building a high-achieving workforce as well as Dana. A recently retired Navy SEAL Commander, Dana grew up in the SEAL Teams, with the complexity and challenges of leadership increasing as he rose in rank and responsibility. “On the battlefield, you constantly innovate because the adversary is always evolving,” continued Dana. “We quickly built strong, cohesive teams that operated with maximum efficiency and precision. This was something we could do in a straightforward manner since we all had the shared experience and common bond of being SEALs and because there are only 16 of us in a platoon.” As his career progressed, Dana rose to overseeing operations at three separate major commands. “At each command I spearheaded critical modernization efforts, from a complete overhaul of SEAL Officer assessment and selection, to functionally realigning my own 76-person operations department, to preparing two separate commands for the integration of women Special Operators. Each of these transformational changes required leading, motivating, and organizing a diverse workforce of military, government civilian, and contractor personnel with different skill sets, backgrounds, and affiliations.” These transformational changes were necessary for mission success yet also threatened to be extremely disruptive. “Most people do not like change,” explained Dana, “so they have to be confident that their leadership team will make necessary changes while remaining steady, thoughtful, and people-focused. We ensured that managers earned their people's trust, that each person knew they would be seen, heard, and respected as a team member.” These mission-critical efforts also required careful assessment, analysis, and process improvements to build, organize, and develop a diverse workforce prepared to overcome emergent challenges. “The key was right-sizing the workforce and creating a sense of individual purpose to the shared mission,” continued Dana. “We take a step-wise approach to execute our strategy for human capital management. First, we assess how we manage our workforce—our human capital. This is an assessment of our current workforce capacity and capability mix, and our processes for how we recruit, screen, select, onboard, develop, and backfill. The second step is to assess our workforce requirements as determined by our current and future mission. We crosswalk our workforce capacity and capability assessment with our mission requirements to show traceability and identify any gaps. The third step is to roadmap an executable plan of action to overcome identified gaps and thoughtfully address any inefficiencies in our workforce.” Each of these transformations resulted in an organization that was optimized, right-sized, and motivated. “Not only did our process ensure that we had the right people in the right roles to get the job done, it communicated to every single person in this large organization that they were there for an important reason,” said Dana. “This is critical for effective leadership and management. Each person knows they are a necessary part of mission success. They understand how they fit in, and they appreciate the contributions of other team members.” “This makes organizational transformation a source of inspiration and motivation, instead of being a source of fear and uncertainty. We made change a positive thing despite very challenging circumstances. I am incredibly proud of that.” This powerful approach to human capital management is also how Roper successfully manages organizational growth and change. “We are guided by core values of integrity, teamwork, and the constant pursuit of excellence,” explained Dana. “The work we do is very difficult. Everyone at Roper knows that they are on the team because they are essential to accomplishing our mission and goals. This strong culture is foundational to our success and is a direct result of our human capital strategy.”